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Allison Sloane: A Bird in the Hand

Allison Sloane has something John Cleese, in a famous Monty Python sketch, never had: a live parrot.

The Python troupe’s routine featured an irate customer complaining to a willfully uncomprehending pet shop owner that he had been sold a dead blue parrot. Allison, however, has some 33 live parrots in a rescue sanctuary in the rear of her flower shop, Ashleigh’s Garden in Deep River. But she has far more ambitious plans for the parrots and for her menagerie of reptiles that, with one exception, she keeps at her own home in Deep River.

On a recent morning that exception, Humphrey an African spurred tortoise, rested intermittently munching grass in his enclosure while a lamp above created the warmth that Humphrey would feel in his native Saharan habitat.

Allison’s dream, which she is working hard to make reality, is The Pandemonium Rain Forest Project, a combination zoo and sanctuary of more than 100,000 square feet, with a large rainforest area as its central feature in which the parrots can fly freely. The Pandemonium Rainforest will have space to heal and nurture injured birds and reptiles and a veterinarian specializing in exotic animals.

The building will have a separate reptile area to make it possible to access the birds without going through the reptile section.

“I know some people can be funny about reptiles,” Allison says.

She adds that in the outreach programs she currently does for local schools involving reptiles, the snakes and lizards are a big hit with students.

“They love them,” she says.

So does she. Alison hiked parts of the Appalachian Trail with a ball python named Mo. The purpose of the hike, for which Allison raised funds, was to educate the public about the dangers of Lyme disease, from which she suffers. She had planned to distribute information about Lyme along her way, but she was foiled by the very condition she was working to defeat: Lyme disease. It so affected her knees and joints that she was forced to abandon the trek.

Old Lyme Architects J. Richard Staub and Sabrina Weisberger Foulke are designing The Pandemonium Rainforest Project facility. Weisberger first heard about the project through an employee of her firm who had used Ashleigh’s Garden for wedding flowers.

“Allison met us, we felt a connection, and we thought it would be interesting and exciting work,” Weisberger said.

In addition, Weisberger admits she liked reptiles though she did not own any.

“I visit friends who have them,” she says.

Allison first focused on a site in Deep River for The Pandemonium Rainforest Project, and then considered one in Old Saybrook, but neither worked out. She is currently looking at a site in Westbrook. She describes the possibility of acquiring the property as “90 percent certain.” Westbrook First Selectman Noel Bishop, however, described the talks as “so preliminary” he couldn’t really comment on them.

“We’re always pleased when a new business wants to locate in Westbrook and this is an interesting idea, but it’s very premature to say anything,” he said.

He said he had an upcoming meeting with The Pandemonium Rainforest Project representatives.

Allison estimates that it will cost some $25 million to build The Pandemonium Rainforest Project, of which she says she has already raised some $12 million in pledges, mostly from individuals. She has set up a charitable entity for contributions. Right now, she says, she plows much of the profit of her flower shop back into the care of her rescued animals.

For Allison, The Pandemonium Rainforest Project will not only be about rescue and rehabilitation, but also about education.

“It’s a win-win situation for everybody; win for animals, win for people,” she says.

She explains that purchasers often don’t know what they are getting into when they buy pets like parrots.

“People buy them for all kinds of reasons, sometimes just because they match their décor...They look pretty, but they can scream and bite,” she says.

And what’s more, parrots don’t like everybody.

“They pick their people,” she notes.

Add to that, the fact that parrots are long-lived, as much as 75 to 100 years, and a problem parrot can be a problem for a very long time.

The parrots Alison rescues are not for adoption.

“They have been too traumatized,” she says. “They are bottom of the barrel animals, so messed up they could not be placed.”

More than 10 of the birds she has have been rescued from crack houses, not because the denizens loved birds but because the birds had value.

“People would say to them, ‘See, you can sell this bird for $500, or whatever,’” she explains.

Olive was Allison’s first parrot rescue some 15 years ago. She tried to explain to the man who dropped the bird off at the former location of Ashleigh’s Garden in Centerbrook that she did not rescue birds, just reptiles, but by then he had left.

Olive’s problem? The bird had been made to drink alcohol by her former owners, leaving her both unstable and prone to outbursts of screaming—and when Olive screamed, there was another problem. The parrot swore like a trooper. Now, Allison reports, Olive has calmed down and when the bird curses, it mostly mumbles.

On a recent morning Alison introduced a visitor to Morgan, a blue, green, and orange macaw sitting quietly in her arms. One could not tell from the parrot’s behavior what a problem it had been. Morgan had so harassed the wife of the couple that adopted the bird that they tried to find other people to take it. When they could not, euthanasia seemed the only solution. An avian veterinarian called Allison for rescue on the very morning Morgan was to be put down.

Occasionally Allison will get a call about a bird that is not a parrot, hence Jerry the canary. Jerry’s problem was that he was “morbidly obese.” With proper diet, she reports, he slimmed down.

Reptile rehabilitation has not always been a smooth path for Allison. At her location in Centerbrook, the state of Connecticut once removed 13 of her 137 rescued animals.

“They took animals and they never should have come in,” she says. “They [the state] apologized, but they didn’t return the animals.”

Most, she says had died in the facilities in which they were placed.

Now Alison says she has been cooperating with Connecticut departments of Agriculture and Environmental Protection on the plans of The Pandemonium Rainforest Project. She says the state is interested in the tourist potential of the large facility.

Allison points out that she thinks of The Pandemonium Rainforest Project as a new model for zoos.

“Zoos do not exhibit animals that have been maimed or disfigured. Animals like that are usually euthanized, not displayed,” she says.

All of the animals at The Pandemonium Rainforest Project will be rescues, with one exception: the Komodo dragon, the largest member of the lizard family, which can grow up to 10 feet long. According to Allison there are only 100 in the United States and none in Connecticut.

There is another zoo of sorts in Allison’s life, but a more private one. In addition to the reptiles she has in her home, she owns four dogs, three cats, two horses, pheasants, chickens, and three emus, large flightless ostrich-like birds that stand more than six feet tall. She originally adopted two emus from a friend; by the time they died, she had become so fond of the birds that she bought three emu babies from an emu farm in Massachusetts. In this country, she says the large birds are raised for their meat and oil.

Allison, who majored in graphic design and photography at Southern Connecticut State University, says that despite her love of animals, she never thought about being a veterinarian.

“I like animals. Veterinarians deal more with people,” she explains.

Still, even for a woman who loves animals, there can be challenges in loving each and every one of them.

“I don’t like spiders,” Allison admits.

For more about The Pandemonium Rainforest Project, visit www.pandemoniumrainforestproject.org.